Gage
The last blanket clip refuses to cooperate.
It’s a simple thing. Plastic. Spring-loaded. Designed for people who don’t treat arts and crafts like a hostile takeover.
I pinch it open with more force than necessary, jaw tight, and stare at the edge of the navy blanket like it personally insulted my competence.
“Come on,” I mutter under my breath. “We’ve all had a long year.”
The clip snaps into place with a decisive click.
My shoulders drop a fraction.
There.
Secure. Stable. Over-engineered.
Predictably me.
And maybe that’s the point—because the last few months have been anything but.
Winter broke open our routine like a cracked pipe: the storm, the generator hum, Reece in my house, cocoa on the counter, and a kiss that changed the entire architecture of my life.
Then the platform confession—her chaos, my truth, the way her hands finally stopped shaking when mine found them.
The way we walked into work after that like two people pretending their whole world hadn’t just shifted an inch to the left.
We did it the responsible way. I fixed the reporting structure.
We drew the lines clean, not because we wanted distance, but because I refused to let love cost her safety.
Reece hated the paperwork and called it “romance admin,” but she signed every form with the same stubborn courage she brings to everything.
And then… we built something quieter than a grand announcement.
Shared commutes that turned into shared breakfasts.
Her spare toothbrush becoming a permanent one.
Friday nights on my couch that somehow became our couch.
Rosie being unbearable about it in a way only Rosie can be.
My mom sending “accidental” dessert over every Sunday like she was feeding a future.
It wasn’t fireworks every day.
It was better.
It was routine becoming chosen. It was Reece laughing again—real laughter, the kind that doesn’t end too fast. It was her saying “always” when I asked if she made it home, even when home started meaning my front door more often than hers.
Spring came. The snow melted. The street thawed.
And somewhere between a random Tuesday morning coffee run and a quiet summer night where she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, I realized the truth I’d been circling since we were kids—
I didn’t just want her.
I wanted a lifetime of choosing her.
So I build the fort like it’s a blueprint. Like it’s a promise. Like if I make it sturdy enough, the moment won’t slip out from under me the way the winter sidewalks tried to.
I step back and take it in.
String lights. Blankets. Rug. Pillows arranged in a way that looks casual if you don’t know me.
A backyard fort.
In the same yard where we used to stand at eight years old and swear we’d connect our houses one day.
My hands go unsteady again.
Not because I’m nervous about the fort.
Because tonight isn’t about blankets.
Tonight is about asking the only question I’ve never wanted to say out loud until I was sure the answer could be yes.
I glance up at the sky. Summer is thick in the air—warm, soft, alive. Fireflies flicker in the dark like tiny sparks someone forgot to turn off. Somewhere down the street, a sprinkler clicks on and off. A car door shuts, distant. The neighborhood sounds like a lullaby.
Everything feels… settled.
Which makes my heart feel like it’s about to do something reckless.
The back door creaks.
I don’t turn right away. I know the sound of that door in every season. I know the weight of it. I know the way the porch light spills onto the steps.
And I know the sound of Reece Callahan’s footsteps when she’s trying not to make a big deal out of anything.
“Why are you standing like you’re about to give a presentation?” her voice calls softly from behind me.
I turn.
She’s barefoot on the patio, a glass of iced tea in her hand, hair loose over her shoulders. She’s in a soft summer dress that looks like it belongs in candlelight and laughter, not in spreadsheets and train stations. The fabric moves with the breeze, and she looks… easy.
Not because her life is easy. Because she’s learned how to be.
Because she’s safe.
And my chest tightens with it—love arriving in that familiar, steady wave that doesn’t knock me over anymore. It just becomes the air I breathe.
I clear my throat. “I’m assessing structural integrity.”
Reece squints. “It’s a fort.”
“It’s an investment,” I correct.
She takes one step forward, then another, and her gaze shifts past me—past the patio, past the lights—and lands on the fort.
Her mouth parts.
For a beat, she doesn’t speak at all.
Then she looks back at me, eyes wide with the kind of delight she tries to hide and never really can.
“You did not,” she says softly.
“I did,” I reply.
Reece walks forward like she’s approaching an animal that might startle. She circles the entrance of the fort, fingertips brushing the blanket edge like she’s confirming it’s real.
“You built a fort,” she says, voice hushed like we’re in church.
I lift a brow. “It’s summer.”
“That doesn’t explain—”
“It does,” I insist, like that ends the conversation.
Reece laughs once, breathy and disbelieving, and it hits me straight in the chest. That laugh used to be rare after Jesse. It used to come with caution. It used to end too fast.
Now it stays.
Now it belongs to her again.
She ducks inside without waiting for permission.
Of course she does.
She always has.
And when she disappears into the glow of the string lights, my pulse spikes anyway.
Because she belongs in my life. In my yard. In my home. In this moment.
She pokes her head back out, grinning. “We have a rug.”
“Comfort matters,” I say, automatically.
She holds up a throw pillow. “We have… multiple pillows.”
“I’m normal,” I say.
Reece’s eyes narrow. “You built a backyard fort with engineered blanket clips and mood lighting.”
“I said I’m normal,” I repeat.
She laughs again, and I can’t help smiling.
This is the part people don’t understand about me—about us.
They don’t see the thousand small things.
The way she turns my radio down without asking, like it’s her constitutional right.
The way I keep extra chargers because she always forgets hers.
The way we still instinctively walk in step, even in crowded sidewalks, even in Penn Station, even in rooms full of people who want our attention.
The way she says “always” when I tell her to text me when she’s home, like it’s a vow she’s been making since we were kids.
The way I’ve loved her in a language so quiet it looked like friendship from the outside.
Until winter happened.
Until the storm forced us to be honest.
Until she kissed me.
Reece crawls deeper into the fort, settling on the rug with her legs folded beneath her, and pats the spot beside her.
“Come here,” she orders.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say automatically, because I’ve been responding to her like that since middle school.
I duck inside, careful not to bump the string lights, and sit beside her.
The fort smells faintly like fresh laundry and summer air. The glow makes everything softer—the blankets, the pillows, her face.
Reece shifts closer, shoulder brushing mine. Not accidental.
Never accidental anymore.
She glances at me and smiles like she’s keeping a secret. “Okay. What is this?”
“This,” I say, reaching behind me, “is part two.”
She blinks. “Part two of what?”
I pull out the small booklet tucked under the pillow.
It’s not thick. It’s not fancy. It’s bound in a way that would look ridiculous if anyone else did it, but somehow, with her, it feels exactly right. The cover is plain and simple: black paper, white lettering.
Reece takes it from my hands carefully, like it’s fragile.
She reads the front.
Her eyes lift to mine.
“You wrote a book,” she says, slow.
“It’s not a book,” I say immediately, because calling it a book feels like too much.
Reece tilts her head. “Gage.”
“It’s… a thing,” I adjust.
“A thing,” she repeats, amused.
“It’s for us,” I say, and my voice goes a little quieter on that last word.
Her expression softens.
“Read-aloud night?” she asks, like we’re twelve again and building a stage out of couch cushions.
I nod.
She looks down at the booklet again, then back at me. “Am I the narrator?”
“You always are,” I say.
Reece’s mouth curves. “Of course I am.”
She flips it open and clears her throat dramatically.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announces, voice rich and theatrical, “welcome to tonight’s performance.”
I lift a brow. “Inside a fort.”
“It’s intimate theater,” she says. “Exclusive seating.”
“Only two tickets,” I murmur.
Reece’s eyes flick to mine, a quick spark there, and my chest tightens.
She starts reading.
Her voice fills the fort—warm, playful, familiar.
And the words I wrote, the ones I kept in my head for months, for years, unfold like a path we’re walking together.
Not in a grand, sweeping, dramatic way.
In a us way.
In a way that makes my throat tighten on the smallest lines.
There was a boy next door who learned early that the girl next door didn’t like to be saved.
She liked to be believed.
So he believed her. Over and over. Quietly.
Reece pauses and looks at me like she’s trying to decide whether to tease me or let the moment stay soft.
“Okay,” she says, voice gentle. “This is already unfair.”
“It’s accurate,” I reply.
She snorts, then goes back to reading.
They grew up measuring life in porch lights and train schedules.
In borrowed hoodies and stolen Oreos.
In a routine so steady it felt like home.
Her voice catches on the last word.
Not in a sad way.
In a full way.
She keeps reading, and the fort becomes a time machine.
She reads about mornings on the train, the way she argues with my radio, the way she pretends she doesn’t like how I always know her coffee order. She reads about my mother’s dramatic joy and her own mother’s relentless love. She reads about Rosie’s gremlin satisfaction.
She reads about the storm.